The Love, Hope & Strength Fundraiser was organized to find a cure for Spinal Muscular Atrophy – the #1 genetic killer of young children and a disease that affects hundreds of families in North Carolina. This is the largest event in the Triangle dedicated to finding a cure or treatment for SMA.

Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) is a genetic disease that attacks nerve cells, called motor neurons, in the spinal cord. These cells communicate with your voluntary muscles – the ones you can control, like in your arms and legs. As the neurons die, the muscles weaken. This can affect walking, crawling, breathing, swallowing, and head and neck control.

SMA runs in families, and although parents usually have no symptoms, they can still carry the gene.

Families of SMA is focused on funding SMA research to develop a treatment and cure for the disease. The organization has delivered basic research to drug discovery to clinical trials and provided real hope for families and patients impacted by the disease. The charity has invested over $55 million in research and has been involved in funding half of all the ongoing novel drug programs for SMA.

July 31, 2013

The Adobe Creative Cloud, a MacBook Pro and a Mark 5D III are all fine tools — but that isn’t where creativity resides. It lives inside of the artist.

Many creative people can get too focused on hardware and programs, forgetting that the those aren’t the tools that will truly make their work great.

A recent story by The Verge highlighted 97-year-old Hal Lasko, a retired typesetter who now creates beautiful pieces of art with the outdated Microsoft program, Paint.

Lasko has a disorder called wet macular degeneration, which has left the former typographer legally blind. Microsoft Paint lets him to zoom in on small sections and has allowed him to continue working long after he thought his painting days were through.

Granted, there are many illustration programs on the market that blow MS Paint out of the water — but that’s not what it’s about. Lasko is able to take his God-given creativity and make beautiful work with this outdated program.

The Research Triangle park recently hosted another RTP 180° event — challenging all of the marketers in the Triangle to come up with the best, most creative 2-3 minute video shorts to advertise the RTP region.

Naturally, Three Post accepted this challenge.

But there was a problem — after tending to all of the necessary work for our clients, there were only four days remaining to produce a video. Regardless of the extra level of difficulty piled on by the time constraints, we laced up our boots and went to work.

With whatever resources we could scrape together, we busted our butts over the weekend to make it happen. And when the dust settled we presented a video that we felt represented our passion for our work and area we call home.

Unfortunately we lost.

But that’s not the point.

The point is that we chose to make our video almost entirely with a GoPro camera. In fact, well over 95% of the footage was taken with this tiny camera that costs around $300.

It’s not that we couldn’t have shot with anything else. We actually had a Sony F3 at our disposal which we used for a few shots. Our choice to use the tiny GoPro was a challenge to ourselves.

We also knew we had to, because of time constraints, had to be nimble and quick with our production. So we were able to hook the GoPro to a small Pico Dolly and achieved a very cinematic feel to our shots.

In the end, we feel that we were able to take, what many would consider, a lesser camera and create a video that stood up to our high standards.

July 10, 2013

Three Post refuses to be constricted.

Our talents extend well beyond the frames of video we’re known for producing. Here at Three Post we’re designers at heart.

Recently Three Post produced a complete redesign of MA Allen Interior’s website. MA Allen Interiors is a full service commercial and residential interior design firm located here in Raleigh, NC. Three Post shares MA Allen’s passion for beautiful design and craftsmanship, so the project was a good fit.

The following is a bit of a post-project assessment and reflection — walking you through process and conception that went into the web design. We encourage you to visit the new MA Allen Interiors site and let us know your thoughts.

What was the design process/inspiration for the site?
Attention to detail in one’s craft. MA Allen Interiors does amazing work and we wanted to reflect that in the design and layout of the site by utilizing the beautiful photography and clean lines.

Challenges with web design?
The challenges were getting the design to be brand consistent on all platforms (mobile, tablet and computer). We wanted the experience to be simple and clean like the MA brand. There were many little things we needed to accomplish in the design/coding to reflect that across the platforms.

How were those challenges met?
Trial and error. That sounds simple, but that’s how things get done. We knew what we wanted, it just took some time to actually “make it work.”

How is web design different than video production?
I guess you could argue that they’re extremely different, but in fact, they are very similar. It’s all about communicating a message. Much like video, you have a very short amount of time to get your message across before someone will lose interest. It’s the same with web design. If the site you’re creating doesn’t interest the user quickly, then you’ve lost them. If you want people to stay on your site then you need a more interesting and informative site.

June 28, 2013

“Honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable television commercials and programs, as well as the finest video and film productions, and work created on the web.”

The Telly Awards was founded in 1979 and is the premier award honoring outstanding local, regional, and cable TV commercials and programs, the finest video and film productions, and online commercials, video and films. Winners represent the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators, and corporate video departments in the world.

“The Telly Awards has a mission to honor the very best in film and video,” said Linda Day, Executive Director of the Telly Awards. “Three Post’s accomplishment illustrates their creativity, skill, and dedication to their craft and serves as a testament to great film and video production.”

A prestigious judging panel of over 500 accomplished industry professionals, each a past winner of a Silver Telly and a member of The Silver Telly Council, judged the competition, upholding the historical standard of excellence that Telly represents. The Silver Council evaluated entries to recognize distinction in creative work – entries do not compete against each other – rather entries are judged against a high standard of merit. Less than 10% of entries are chosen as Winners of the Silver Telly, our highest honor.

It came as a great honor and surprise when Three Post was asked to come speak at this ambitious event. Even more humbling than the invitation, the write-up given to Three Post on the events landing page was a lot to live up to.

“What happens when top talent from the region’s best agencies go rogue and make their own state-of-the-art startup studio? Come and find out.”

Three Post’s Creative Director Michael Fortson drew the short straw — and it was his job to be the face of Three Post for the night. We thought it’d be interesting to fire a few questions at Fortson and see how things went from his point-of-view.

What were your first thoughts when Three Post was asked to speak at RTP 180?
What? Someone wants to hear what we have to say? Then I was actually honored that they thought about us. I was also very excited at the opportunity to be amongst some of the most influential marketing people in the Triangle.

What were some of the ideas that were batted around when brainstorming for your presentation?
Once we agreed to speak at the event we instantly started to think of interesting ways we could present our content. The most obvious was to showcase a video. Since we are a video company we thought there was no better way to get our message across and showcase our own work.

We started to concept on a particular idea that involved many different locations, actors, props, etc….so it was totally unrealistic to produce in our timeframe. But that brainstorming session gave us many ideas moving forward.

Can you walk us through the process of developing your presentation?
The process was really simple. This was our first time speaking to a group like this, and being as new and small as we are, we knew part of our presentation needed to partly educate the audience on who we are. So we started with a demo reel video of some of our most recent work.

Once we had told the audience about Three Post, we moved into why we think video marketing is so crucial. We wanted everyone to understand that video is a necessary component to a complete marketing strategy — but that video alone isn’t the answer. Simply creating a video and throwing up on YouTube is far too passive. You have to develop and manage channels that will increase the chances of that video’s success.

What was the overarching theme of Three Post’s presentation at RTP 180?
Simply put, people read less and watch more. Get your message and brand identity out in a 30 second video instead of page after page of text .

What do you hope those in attendance were able to take away from your presentation?
I hope people took away that Three Post is a new company in the Triangle that has an incredible desire to make great videos!

We’re different from traditional agencies and production companies. With art, design, motion and film merging, the idea of an agency simply going to a production house to “execute” isn’t going to cut it. The creators at Three Post understand this concept.

If you could do it again, would you? And if so, what would you do differently?
Absolutely! We had a great time and met a ton of new people. We would have created a longer video and talked less!